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From WTC to WTF: What's your take?

Lately, I have spent some time researching what's on the internet (A LOT!) about the 9/11 events.

I remember well how, at the time, I was watching the television with a friend and business associate. When the twin towers collapsed we looked at eachother in disbelief. There was no doubt that it was somehow a rigged demolition - but we had no idea how they - whoever they are/were - pulled that off. It was just one of those "WOW!" moments. (It should probably be mentioned that at the time, we were running a construction company and that we did a bit of demolition ourselves, so it is fair to say that we both had, and still have, quite a good and hands-on "feel" for how construction materials behave, even though none of us are accredited physicists or engineers.)

As the days went by it became blatantly clear that something sinister was going on. The "explanations" that came out defied as well common sense as known laws of physics. How could the plane that hit the Pentagon simply "evaporate", titanium-steel-alloys and all, but still leave behind DNA material enough to identify the passengers? And that alleged plane crash in Pennsylcania was even more mysterious. Where's the fucking plane?!?

In the months that followed, things got really ugly. An Orwellian "war on terrorism" was launched - and it was declared that America is above international law. Even above its own law! We saw the pictures from Guantanamo Bay. It was like a twisted parody on the movie "Wag The Dog" but it was undeniably real: America had fallen into the hands of a small cabal of so-called neocons, who, true to the teachings of their master and guru Leo Strauss, churned out one wild-eyed fantasy story of conspiracy more phantasmagorical than the next, in a propaganda operation nobody had seen the likes of since the days of Josef Goebbels.

It still goes on, almost ten years later. To this day, nobody as been able to offer a credible explanation for what really happened on that day. But there is a grass root sort of movement who refuse to swallow that ridiculous canard that is the "official" story. Among, frankly, untold amounts of completely idiotic speculations, there are serious people who patiently work towards what should have happened right away: A meticulous criminal investigation, based in scientific principles, under the leadership of a grand jury, which can once and for all establish an explanation that satisfies.

For instance, how can an anisotropic, organic process of fire lead to a symmetric, global collapse of tensile strength in a steel construction? It flies in the face of well known principles of thermodynamics, as well Newton's law of inertia. But most importantly: Why is this issue allowed to remain unresolved for all this time, creating a political state of tension that threatens to rip America apart? Sensible questions that have been raised by inquiring minds, most of them based in critical professionalism, are being met with vile accusations of being "unpatriotic". WTF is going on?

"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)

To show otherwise it seems pretty simple: You need to show, through math, that if the buildings above the plane fell by ten to twenty feet, the supports below the plane would have enough strength to absorb the energy of the impact without collapsing (factoring in the physical and heat damage of the lower floors by the time of collapse). If I had to guess, I would imagine that the energy from that kind of moving mass is far beyond what the structure was designed to support. Probably *way* beyond it.

Which I have already provided (and so has Marquis) and if noone reads it then it's not much use is it? It is refuted. NIST is refuted by competent professionals showing their calculations. The buildings could withstand the damage. Easily. Read the paper. Read anything I have referred to.

The incredulity you will meet is those who can't believe anything but the official story.

What is analagous to a miracle only in a very very bad way? A unique horrible event that defies the laws of nature and all our experience with common materials. That's the way the propaganda around this event has imprinted in people - that this was a physical event beyond our comprehension and completely unprecedented in its physical effects. The official explanation of the event is a 'black box'. And it's a completely unsatisfactory black box.

"There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right." Martin Luther King

To show otherwise it seems pretty simple: You need to show, through math, that if the buildings above the plane fell by ten to twenty feet, the supports below the plane would have enough strength to absorb the energy of the impact without collapsing (factoring in the physical and heat damage of the lower floors by the time of collapse). If I had to guess, I would imagine that the energy from that kind of moving mass is far beyond what the structure was designed to support. Probably *way* beyond it.

Which I have already provided (and so has Marquis) and if noone reads it then it's not much use is it? It is refuted. NIST is refuted by competent professionals showing their calculations. The buildings could withstand the damage. Easily. Read the paper. Read anything I have referred to.

The incredulity you will meet is those who can't believe anything but the official story.

What is analagous to a miracle only in a very very bad way? A unique horrible event that defies the laws of nature and all our experience with common materials. That's the way the propaganda around this event has imprinted in people - that this was a physical event beyond our comprehension and completely unprecedented in its physical effects. The official explanation of the event is a 'black box'. And it's a completely unsatisfactory black box.

You mean all the things people have been providing links to, where other 'competent professionals' are contradicting the conspiracy claims? Ah.

At this point, to a lay person, I have these professional guys over here saying it was possible, and these professional guys over here saying it was impossible. There are more of the former than the latter, and I have no expertise in the area so...yea, I'm not going to write my congress critter demanding an investigation unless someone can do better.

And to top it off, if it was 'impossible' you now have a massive conspiracy to justify.

So have I been edified by this process? No. I found a large paper with lots of math that sums up as, "We watched the building collapse, and we think there should have been a jolt when the large mass of steel beams hit the other large mass of steel beams but it doesn't look like that in the grainy TV video. How shocking, that a non-rigid mass doesn't show visible impacts at non-impacting side.

Now I've learned that engineers aren't special, and there is a minority that disagrees with the majority. In this particular case it appears that the minority is wrong.

So, is it my duty to go through every paper and give it this same treatment, or can I get on with my life?

This also debunks the official 'conspiracy theory'. It takes some familiarization with some of the author names to know which 'conspiracy theories' they are referring to, since all theories of the collapse involve a conspiracy of some sort.

If I had been satisfied with leaving 'truth' as someone else's job to discern, I would still be a Christian. It would have been much easier. It's in my nature. Funny, I thought I had found people here with a similar interest in ascertaining truth over mythification. Perhaps I'm in the wrong place then.

"There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right." Martin Luther King

This also debunks the official 'conspiracy theory'. It takes some familiarization with some of the author names to know which 'conspiracy theories' they are referring to, since all theories of the collapse involve a conspiracy of some sort.

If I had been satisfied with leaving 'truth' as someone else's job to discern, I would still be a Christian. It would have been much easier. It's in my nature. Funny, I thought I had found people here with a similar interest in ascertaining truth over mythification. Perhaps I'm in the wrong place then.

The truther debate involves groups of experts using facts on both sides. If you think this debate is analogous to the theism debate I'm not sure what to tell you. The professional community isn't even on 'your' side.

I don't feel the need to investigate technical issues that have already been investigated in a manner that most engineers in the field have accepted. I'm not going to get a masters degree in every field that would help me personally debunk a conspiracy theory.

My problem with this is there was a massive investigation that created a huge paper by a large number of professionals. Now there are websites where people point to 'smoking guns' that refute that paper. The paper I listed is a good example. Then if anyone disputes the 'smoking gun' they are mocked for being sheep or something.

Engineers can't agree on this 100%, but more of them seem to agree with NIST than with 9/11 truthers. So again, I'm not quite sure what you and Marquis are after here, unless you expected there to be some sort of thing where atheists at this particular forum would also statistically support a minority view of a structural engineers over an argument about a conspiracy that collapsed the towers on 9/11.

The simple fact that you both seem so convinced you are right makes me shy away. Like I said to Marquis, he "knew" there was a problem from day one. That sets off my alarm bells.

I guess my summary could be: This isn't religion, it is math and engineering. Most engineers involved dispute that 9/11 was a conspiracy.

If you are an engineer qualified to speculate on this, then write up a paper and submit it for peer review and see what actual engineers say about your ideas.

If you are not an engineer qualified to speculate on this, how do you know your chosen arguments are 'better' than those of the bulk of engineers who are qualified to speculate on the matter?

I doubt anyone here will convince you your opinion is not valid if you have not already accepted the consensus of the engineering community. You act like supporting the official findings is irrational somehow, but all you've done to show it is irrational is literally link to 9/11 truth sites, even though those sites all have other websites debunking them.

If I post a link to a 9/11 truther debunking site, does that make you irrational because you don't automatically believe me?

My problem with this is there was a massive investigation that created a huge paper by a large number of professionals. {....} Like I said to Marquis, he "knew" there was a problem from day one.

And *my* problem is that there wasn't any "massive investigation". (Where did you get this strange idea from?) There was a political exploitation of tragedy and general confusion, which lead to a very questionable invation of a 3rd world country, then another convenient war - based in blatant lies, followed by a whimsical parody of an investigation which started out with making claims that had already proven to be factually wrong (the identity of the hijackers).

And, as I have already repeated over and over again, I *knew* something wasn't right because I know about construction and demolition. But I'm not a scientist by profession, so I can't write any *paper* as such, nor do I have a lot of lifetime to invest into this matter. But I must say that I find it mind boggling how many otherwise presumptously intelligent people who buy the crap wholesale.

It makes me, again, praise the Lord for not being an American. (OBS! Irony!)

"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)

If you are not an engineer qualified to speculate on this, how do you know your chosen arguments are 'better' than those of the bulk of engineers who are qualified to speculate on the matter?

I'm not an engineer, qualified or otherwise. I have a Masters of Science degree, which has taught me skills to think for myself. I can evaluate arguments and I can also tell when I really am way out of my depth. I understand science and how scientific publication and peer review works. I've read information in support of the 'official conspiracy' and information refuting the 'official conspiracy'. I've read information supporting explosive demolition and information refuting it. I use my own grey matter to discern what is good science and what is 'black box' technobabble.

It is the same process I used to arrive at my current atheist state.

I wouldn't expect anyone to agree with me just because I tell them something.

mellested wrote:

If I post a link to a 9/11 truther debunking site, does that make you irrational because you don't automatically believe me?

Chances are I've already read it. But I would at least read it before dismissing it as ridiculous.

"There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right." Martin Luther King

Again, I can but state what I have done all along: This is a *faith-based* matter.

The people who react very emotionally have bought the official cock-and-bull story, wholesale.

It is, for some reason that I fail to understand, *necessary* for them to be believers, and they fight tooth and claw, against hard evidence to the contrary, to defend the *official* story of Ali Baba and the 19 hijackers. This would be howlingly hilarious if the circumstances were less serious. If nothing else, this whole complex will go down in history as a classical example of how to create and exploit a political spin.

"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)

Again, I can but state what I have done all along: This is a *faith-based* matter.

The people who react very emotionally have bought the official cock-and-bull story, wholesale.

It is, for some reason that I fail to understand, *necessary* for them to be believers, and they fight tooth and claw, against hard evidence to the contrary, to defend the *official* story of Ali Baba and the 19 hijackers. This would be howlingly hilarious if the circumstances were less serious. If nothing else, this whole complex will go down in history as a classical example of how to create and exploit a political spin.

I don't recall being emotional -

I recall saying I have no informed opinion. Period. And I'm not about to get emotional. The hormones are in tune today and I have a new haircut that is really cute. All is right with my world.

Frivolous, but you guys aren't responding to my posts so why not.

-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.

"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken

"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.

So have I been edified by this process? No. I found a large paper with lots of math that sums up as, "We watched the building collapse, and we think there should have been a jolt when the large mass of steel beams hit the other large mass of steel beams but it doesn't look like that in the grainy TV video. How shocking, that a non-rigid mass doesn't show visible impacts at non-impacting side.

Now I've learned that engineers aren't special, and there is a minority that disagrees with the majority. In this particular case it appears that the minority is wrong.

So, is it my duty to go through every paper and give it this same treatment, or can I get on with my life?

Anyone who expected to see a"jolt" there demonstrates a serious lack of understanding of the basic physics of what was happen impact ning there.

There was just so much mass and momentum in the falling section, the lower part of which would have been a collapsed mass of concrete and steel from all the floors between the initial impact floor and all the ones in between where it had fallen to, hitting one floor at a time supported only by structures designed to handle the static load that was now hitting it at a significant velocity.

Again it sounds like more gut reaction, not informed calculation, and therefore not to be taken too seriously in such an unusual situation.

There was just so much mass and momentum in the falling section, the lower part of which would have been a collapsed mass of concrete and steel from all the floors between the initial impact floor and all the ones in between where it had fallen to, hitting one floor at a time supported only by structures designed to handle the static load that was now hitting it at a significant velocity.

Mr. Spence, I am assuming that you don't have any experience with demolition work. Am I correct?

In principle, one would think that the giant mass (in total about 500,000 tonnes) of those buildings (WTC 1 and 2) could wreak quite the havoc, top down, but this still doesn't explain the near free-fall speed (I think they were clocked in at respectively 8.4 and 9.2 seconds), which would require zero resistance in the building materials. If we postulate that the top 10 stories "hammered" down onto the lower construction, it would still need to use some of its kinetic energy in order to crush that part of the building, something which would have slowed it down. But instead we see each floor collapse, on average, at only about 0.08 seconds. It equals a 10 storey building completely falling down in less than a second. Or a 3 storey building in the blink of an eye.

In reality, it is a real bitch to tear down steel-and-concrete constructions. Reinforced concrete combines two seemingly opposite material qualities, which is that of hardness/durability and elasticity. In practical terms this means that steel-and-concrete building do not "want" to fall. They have considerable inertia and considerable resistance in the materials.

However that may be, if this was the only problem with the 9/11 complex, I would probably have grudgingly accepted it - after making a for-the-record note of feeling very uneasy about the unnatural appearance of the building collapses. But there is more. Bulding 7. The Pentagon. Flight 93. The sum total of it all is quite simply too much.

But I think I will leave this subject alone now. I have made my point, right? I see no point in carrying on a discussion which essentially is going nowhere. The only thing that I will do, here, now, at the end, is to link to a site where army seniors, law enforcers, government officials and intelligence operatives are having their say - which is more or less the same as I have been saying all along: This is just *wrong* and a new investigation is needed. And, mind you, these are not lightweighters and wild-eyed conspiracy kooks, but real life professionals with extensive experience and qualifications.

What boggles my mind is that people give a damn about what happened on 9/11.

I think this boggles a lot of people's minds. Most are happy with simply accepting the official cock-and-bull story, thinking it anything from silly to sinister to be questioning the authorities like that. The *authorities*, on the other hand, have, rather than conducting a proper investigation, exploited these events for political purposes, naming anyone who dare question anomalies and inconsitencies "a conspiracy theorist" and pretty much threatening them with as well public ridicule as professional carreer damage. But these are intimidation tactics, quite unbecoming of someone who allegedly values *freedom*.

So what I am really saying is that the nation that draws a conclussion that 3000 of your own killed is damning, while a million of its foreign victims is just collateral, deserves 9/11. Not only do they deserve it, they should be bled with a blunt knife directly into an out-house. The 9/11 truth is so sickening hypocrisy, that I nearly get a heat stroke every time people tell me "you are just a believer of the govt.", or some such bullshit. They slaughtered a million Iraqis - what the fuck are you talking about? Those people should be hanging by their balls from what's left of a raided and burnt down white house, no matter WHAT any 9/11 commission says. Even if the 9/11 commission and Kofi Annan come out and say that the Clinton/Bush/Obama administrations have angle wings and originate directly from the sperm of Jesus and that there is only goodness in them, the whole bunch still commited the crime of aggression and should be lined up and shot - this is as clear as day.

Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.

There was just so much mass and momentum in the falling section, the lower part of which would have been a collapsed mass of concrete and steel from all the floors between the initial impact floor and all the ones in between where it had fallen to, hitting one floor at a time supported only by structures designed to handle the static load that was now hitting it at a significant velocity.

Mr. Spence, I am assuming that you don't have any experience with demolition work. Am I correct?

In principle, one would think that the giant mass (in total about 500,000 tonnes) of those buildings (WTC 1 and 2) could wreak quite the havoc, top down, but this still doesn't explain the near free-fall speed (I think they were clocked in at respectively 8.4 and 9.2 seconds), which would require zero resistance in the building materials. If we postulate that the top 10 stories "hammered" down onto the lower construction, it would still need to use some of its kinetic energy in order to crush that part of the building, something which would have slowed it down. But instead we see each floor collapse, on average, at only about 0.08 seconds. It equals a 10 storey building completely falling down in less than a second. Or a 3 storey building in the blink of an eye.

In reality, it is a real bitch to tear down steel-and-concrete constructions. Reinforced concrete combines two seemingly opposite material qualities, which is that of hardness/durability and elasticity. In practical terms this means that steel-and-concrete building do not "want" to fall. They have considerable inertia and considerable resistance in the materials.

However that may be, if this was the only problem with the 9/11 complex, I would probably have grudgingly accepted it - after making a for-the-record note of feeling very uneasy about the unnatural appearance of the building collapses. But there is more. Bulding 7. The Pentagon. Flight 93. The sum total of it all is quite simply too much.

But I think I will leave this subject alone now. I have made my point, right? I see no point in carrying on a discussion which essentially is going nowhere. The only thing that I will do, here, now, at the end, is to link to a site where army seniors, law enforcers, government officials and intelligence operatives are having their say - which is more or less the same as I have been saying all along: This is just *wrong* and a new investigation is needed. And, mind you, these are not lightweighters and wild-eyed conspiracy kooks, but real life professionals with extensive experience and qualifications.

One of the links I posted was in direct confrontation to your claim about free fall. It even had math, and charts and graphs!

Edit: Also, I fail to see how you can trust your intuition on an event that has literally never happened before. If you had seen a bunch of 100 story steel skyscrapers collapse fine. But no-one has. How can you trust intuition for an event your brain has no prior experience with? There isn't even an institutional knowledge of peacefully demolishing skyscrapers of that type and size. No-one in the world has any idea what a 'normal' skyscraper collapse looks like for a 100 story building because before September 11th *it had never happened in the history of the world*.

This is like me saying my intuition says there is something wrong with the moon landings because the flag doesn't look right, therefore the landings were a hoax.

Edit: Also, I fail to see how you can trust your intuition on an event that has literally never happened before. If you had seen a bunch of 100 story steel skyscrapers collapse fine. But no-one has. How can you trust intuition for an event your brain has no prior experience with? There isn't even an institutional knowledge of peacefully demolishing skyscrapers of that type and size. No-one in the world has any idea what a 'normal' skyscraper collapse looks like for a 100 story building because before September 11th *it had never happened in the history of the world*.

Somehow I don't see how the fact that *it had never happened in the history of the world* makes it more likely that it happened three times in a single day within minutes.

mellestad wrote:

This is like me saying my intuition says there is something wrong with the moon landings because the flag doesn't look right, therefore the landings were a hoax.

No, that is more like you saying: we have never landed on the moon before, which totally destroys your argument that we didn't do it this time either.

All this technicality discussion to the side, if 9/11 was a conspiracy, it should be a footnote in the charges against the past 3 administrations. Focusing exclusivelly on 9/11 as some sort of "supreeme crime" is clear cut racism and hypocrisy. It's like saying: killing a million brown folks - yea, we can discuss that, but 3000 white people - that is unacceptable!

So what if they blew up WTC? How will that change their portfolio of attrocities against humanity? Not at all. They are demonstratively indiscriminate murderers and 9/11 can only add a few numbers to that fact. What can we learn from them blowing up the WTC? Same thing the 60.000+ dead soldiers in Vietnam and 5.000+ in Iraq found out a long time ago - that they don't give a shit who they kill.

Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.

Did I mention that I was *THERE*?... and that as a foreman in those buildings I never noticed any explosives?... Nor did anyone else who worked in those buildings?

It's amazing how many experts on 110 story building demolition there are... since that happens every day...

I'll tell ya what... You can build a couple of skyscrapers... fly passenger jets into them, and see what happens.... until then this conspirasy theory should be re-named "made-up bullshit because I want to appear to be both intelligent and important"

One of the links I posted was in direct confrontation to your claim about free fall. It even had math, and charts and graphs!

Do you mean this one? It's merely a forum for people to discuss the merits of a peer-reviewed paper. It has both positive and negative comments. This is not the same as a published review of a scientific paper, as the objections to the 'Jolt' paper require the same level of scientific review as the original paper. A forum discussion is not sufficient to debunk a peer-reviewed paper. It may raise certain weaknesses in the paper or highlight areas that were not covered sufficiently in detail, but it doesn't refute anything. And it doesn't have to be precisely free-fall in order to raise major objections with the physics and conservation of energy.

If you mean this one heiwaco.tripod.com/nist3.htm? It is actually debunking the official fire and collision - mediated collapse 'theory', not the 'alternative' theories involving some sort of explosives.

NIST has admitted 2.2 seconds of absolute free-fall of WTC 7. www.youtube.com/watch The debate here seems to be whether this is an unusual thing, for a building to collapse into itself at free-fall acceleration. Newton would be .

Of course it talks a lot of work to pull such structures down. You have not provided any calculations to show that the loss of momentum involved in shattering/crushing/buckling the lower structure would have to have slowed the falling part of the building more than was observed.

The distance through which they fell as far as relevance to 'free fall' is concerned would be the distance from the upper part of the impacted area to ground level.

For the lower impact point, the damaged area was below the 85th floor. This gives an estimate of height of something over 1000 feet.

Free fall time from a height of 1000 feet is 7.9 sec. This would be the time for the lower part of the falling section to hit the ground if there had been nothing in between.

8.4 sec implies an average acceleration of 28 ft/sec2 . This is 12.5% less than g, implying an average opposing force of 12.5% of the total falling weight.

Now would this be enough, or not? Note that small errors in the assumed free-fall height and time estimates would make a big difference, since we are trying to estimate the difference between two quantities, namely the average acceleration observed, and g (32 ft/sec2 ).

And how do you compare the work required to pull such a structure down by normal demolition techniques, to the effect of dropping the top section of the building on it? Note that up to 7 floors were damaged by the fire/explosion, giving the falling mass time to build up a significant speed before hitting full resistance.

Also note that calculation of the average observed acceleration is a function of the square of the estimated fall time - accel = 2 X distance / t2 , which would magnify the effect of any error.

This amount of actual math would be the minimum required to properly argue the issue. Informal, subjective observations and 'gut' feelings are no way an adequate substitute.

Did I mention that I was *THERE*?... and that as a foreman in those buildings I never noticed any explosives?... Nor did anyone else who worked in those buildings?

It's amazing how many experts on 110 story building demolition there are... since that happens every day...

I'll tell ya what... You can build a couple of skyscrapers... fly passenger jets into them, and see what happens.... until then this conspirasy theory should be re-named "made-up bullshit because I want to appear to be both intelligent and important"

I saw your earlier post. I know of no reason to disbelieve you. Don't feel bad, they are ignoring all of my posts as well.

-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.

"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken

"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.

And spent some time looking through some engineering sites talking about how the whole thing could have happened without any explosives.

I still haven't found a reasonable explanation for the nano-thermite residue, which was the story that got me very curious about all of this stuff.

It's still baffling to me. But I've read quite a bit that suggests that some of the 'truther' groups of individuals may have some real political motives for fudging some stuff. And making shit up.

So in order to balance some of my regurgitating things that I took to be 'authoritative', here is some information from NIST (which may not be so refuted as it sounded like) as frequently asked questions. It addresses a lot of the concerns brought up by the 'truther' groups.

I still haven't found a reasonable explanation for the nano-thermite residue, which was the story that got me very curious about all of this stuff.

Thank you for taking the time. Let me repeat my earlier suggestion about the residue.

A few years ago, the DEA was very excited. Tests were now available that could detect cocaine on dollar bills if someone who had handled cocaine had then handled bills. But it was a bust. Because ANY RANDOM SAMPLE OF BILLS turned up positive for cocaine.

They abandoned the idea of being able to convict based on cocaine traces on the money.

On to WTC. It seems to me to be a reasonable idea that the particles found were contamination from some other source. Or maybe not even "nano thermite".

I don't know if you bothered to search real hard. I found this article on the 4th page of listings for search "nano thermite 911". Not a real popular article, as everyone would rather believe a conspiracy.

Did I mention that I was *THERE*?... and that as a foreman in those buildings I never noticed any explosives?... Nor did anyone else who worked in those buildings?

It's amazing how many experts on 110 story building demolition there are... since that happens every day...

I'll tell ya what... You can build a couple of skyscrapers... fly passenger jets into them, and see what happens.... until then this conspirasy theory should be re-named "made-up bullshit because I want to appear to be both intelligent and important"

Mr. Woods, I understand your need to believe in the story about Ali Baba and the Nineteen Hijackers. It comforts you.

However, that's no reason to be rude towards people who ask additional questions than those The Great Leader Bush and his utterly trustworthy panel of experts say it is unnecessary to question any further. Since it seems that, for the most, nobody is reading anybody else's links in this thread I will not hold my hopes up, but I will still encourage you to click on the link I will now provide, then scroll down the page a little, look at the people there and their credentials, then perhaps reconsider the "made-up bullshit because I want to appear to be both intelligent and important" bit.

I would also like to say that a lot of people were *THERE* and not all of them made it out. Not even the security people, or the janitors (who usually know the most about what's going on in a building), noticed any explosives beforehand - and I am prone to believe that this is probably because the explosives were hidden from plain view by people who knew well what they were doing. I have heard the argument about how this necessitates miles of wiring, but I seem to have heard that *remote detonators* is a possibility, and has been for quite some time now, especially if the operation is not a matter of fiscal prudence (since they are a bit costly).

But there is no lack of eyewitnesses who saw and/or heard explosions. Lots of them.

Lastly I will say that I don't care whether a structure is one, ten, hondred or thousand storeys high; it is still a physical object in the physical world, behaving, as physical objects do, in a manner which is dictated by *the laws of physics*. I am taking a note of what Mr. Spence is saying though; that I cannot possibly know anything about building demolition because I can't provide the *numbers*, so this invalidates the experience I have - which I admit gives me only a gut feeling for materials and material behaviour - so, even if I will argue that this gives me a gut feeling which is qualitatively different from the vague intuition of a civilian who knows neither theory nor practice, I will not argue the point any further.

As for Miss CJ, I am not commenting to your cocaine allusion out of politeness. WTF has that got to do with anything? It is also a little sad that you will rather take the words of some blogger calling himself "Ron Mossad" (BTW your link doesn't work) than the peer-reviewed study, by spectral-electron-microscope-whatever-anaysis, carried out by a physics professor, under appropriate laboratory conditions. Again, I can only think that this is based in a need to beleieve in the story about Ali Baba and the Nineteen Hijackers. Again, I will say that I *understand*. You simply aren't able to face the grave implications of a model which demands complicity at high levels of the US society. Even if and when you are being lied to and pissed on by these people.

"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)

Lastly I will say that I don't care whether a structure is one, ten, hondred or thousand storeys high; it is still a physical object in the physical world, behaving, as physical objects do, in a manner which is dictated by *the laws of physics*. I am taking a note of what Mr. Spence is saying though; that I cannot possibly know anything about building demolition because I can't provide the *numbers*, so this invalidates the experience I have - which I admit gives me only a gut feeling for materials and material behaviour - so, even if I will argue that this gives me a gut feeling which is qualitatively different from the vague intuition of a civilian who knows neither theory nor practice, I will not argue the point any further.

I in no way intended to suggest you could not "possibly know anything about building demolition because I can't provide the *numbers* ".

That is a ridiculous mis-reading of what I said.

I fact, I intended my question in there to be quite honestly asking your professional opinion as to whether a direct force of the order of 12-20% of the weight of the falling section would be plausibly sufficient to collapse at least the structure supporting the next floor.

Does your response mean that you really can't provide some more concrete, quantitative justification for your views beyond your "gut feeling"? I honestly did hope you could. Instead I get an ad hominem attack.

I repeat that "gut feelings" are inadequate when applied to a situation significantly beyond your direct experience. Which is why I did some basic calculations to get a more firmly-based idea of the forces involved. I have training in the physics and at least some of the engineering involved, having gained a university degree in Engineering. Altho my speciality was Electrical Engineering, the first two years were common to Mechanical Engineering, and the first year was shared with those doing what was called 'Civil' Engineering, which could also be called 'Structural' engineering.

If you have a problem with my calculations, please point out specifically where they were inaccurate or over-simplified. I asked for comments on that quite honestly. They are certainly not 'vague intuitions'. They are based on Newtons Laws of motion.

The truly 'vague intuitive' argument is one concluding that because the rate of descent was 'close to' free-fall, they could therefore not have collapsed without explosive assistance.

Your response makes me suspect that you do indeed lack an actual understanding of the basic physics of the situation, ie the "theory".

I fact, I intended my question in there to be quite honestly asking your professional opinion as to whether a direct force of the order of 12-20% of the weight of the falling section would be plausibly sufficient to collapse at least the structure supporting the next floor.

OK, you're right. I am sorry. It's a little frustrating that I can't do the numbers, but I really suck at maths.

Anyway, my answer is "no". It is not sufficient.

When doing explosive demolition, you will usually blow out the bottom bearings first, in order to start a downward motion of the entire building's mass, which will help in the demolition process, but you will still, delayed by only tenths of a second, blow away the bearings, usually on every second floor, throughout the entire structure, in a sequence which follows the free-fall speed quite accurately. The idea is to make the building fall in on itself, minimising the possible damage to any surrounding structures (which is often the case). If you have a case where, say, you *only* blow up the bearings on the 80th floor of a 100 storey building, you will - likely - observe that the mass of the top will "crunch" down on the lower structure, creating severe damage, but at some point it will tip sideways (or find a stable resting point on top of the rest of the structure) after just a few floors, simply because the structure, no matter how meticulously calculated to be even all throughout, *will* have local weak spots that will make the collapse asymmetric, while at the same time, the elasticity of the reinforced concrete and steel will absorb all the kinetic energy of the falling mass.There are many cases where they have fucked up and the structure has only partially fallen. This is not a precise science. When you do demolition you are much better off with a team of experienced people who have a *feel* for it than even the most accredited theoretical engineering expert.

You can of course overdo the explosives, but the reasons why this is usually not done are economical. This is a costly procedure which takes a long time to rig, and all the stuff is expensive too, so you want it to be fiscally effective, doing no more than what is strictly necessary to achieve the desired result. This cost/effect balance is of course invalidated if the *demolition* of the building is not the ultimate objective of the operation. Some demolition guy somewhere online described the WTC demolition operation as "The Mona Lisa of demolition", i.e. a work of art which makes you just marvel at the scope of mastery involved.

"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)

Obviously, in the static condition of an intact structure, the structure below any level is adequate to support the whole static weight of what is above that level. So the real issue is in the dynamics. The peak force in an impact from a falling mass can be many times the weight, but if it fails quickly, the net loss of momentum of the falling mass may be relatively small.

This only really works if the resistance peaks at discrete points, such as at each floor/ceiling, with relatively 'free' fall till it meets the next floor, which is the 'conventional' explanation of what happened at the WTC - the 'pancaking'.

I have no problem with the idea that as each floor hit the one below, it snapped the ties from the floor to the outer framework, and to the inner core, eliminating any further contribution from either structure to slowing the collapse, and allowing that floor and all the others sitting on top of it to accelerate down to the next one, and so on. This doesn't quite cover the mechanism of collapse of the core and the outer framework themselves, but it does seem to me that the pancaking sequence itself makes a lot of sense, and would not apply to more conventional structures with a more even spread of supporting pillars across the floor space.

FWIW, I did do the tourist trip all the way up to the roof-top walkway there in '99, so I am not without some direct observational 'feel' for the structures.

The question whether a little top part of a building, let's call it C, or structure can destroy the remaning bottom part of the same building or structure, lets call it A, when dropped on it, i.e. C is dropped on A, has been analyzed by religious fundamentalists (read criminals) like prof. Bazant & sect members several times. They suggest it possible, at least if you look at it in one dimension, 1-D, and treat the building as a line (!). They have published their nonsense in ASCE's Journal of Engineering Mechanics several times.

Then line C drops on line A due gravity and line A is compressed into a line B that is 1/4 of original line A! That is called "crush down"! Top part/line C remains intact. Then line B attacks line C in a "crush up" and line C is compressed 4 times and is added to line B. Bazant & Co have made up differential equations to explain the crushes ups and downs. However, and it is serious, they cannot produce a real 3-D structure or building that behaves accordingly.

Reason is that no such structure/building exists in the real world. A little top part C of a structure A cannot apply sufficient force/pressure/energy on A without destroying itself first! No structure can go POUFF, POUFF, POUFF and destroy itself! http://heiwaco.tripod.com/pouf.htm

I have managed to convince ASCE/Journal of Engineering Mechanics to publish a paper of mine to this effect. You can read it at http://heiwaco.tripod.com/blgb.htm . Comments are always welcome.

As for Miss CJ, I am not commenting to your cocaine allusion out of politeness. WTF has that got to do with anything? It is also a little sad that you will rather take the words of some blogger calling himself "Ron Mossad" (BTW your link doesn't work) than the peer-reviewed study, by spectral-electron-microscope-whatever-anaysis, carried out by a physics professor, under appropriate laboratory conditions. Again, I can only think that this is based in a need to beleieve in the story about Ali Baba and the Nineteen Hijackers. Again, I will say that I *understand*. You simply aren't able to face the grave implications of a model which demands complicity at high levels of the US society. Even if and when you are being lied to and pissed on by these people.

The cocaine is an example of the problem of environmental contamination. A substance you would think would be reasonably rare, is actual very prevalent in the atmosphere. Prevalent enough to contaminate 4 out of 5 samples of paper money in the US. When you take a sample for analysis, if you are a very careful researcher, you are also careful to minimize environmental contamination. You don't just grab it up with your hands and put it in your pocket. You continue that care throughout the analysis. This is why independent confirmation of findings is a common and necessary practice in chemical research.

Yes, there have been other people who found "nano thermite", but guess what, they were on your side! And one of them has a BS in Chem E. Wow. This is not independent confirmation. Also, many scientists have been testing the residue for pollutants that have caused people to be so sick. None of them have claimed thermite residue.

“They have printed the article without my permission, so when you wrote to me, I did not know that the article had appeared. I cannot accept this, and therefore I have written to Bentham that I resign from all activities with them”, explains Marie Paule Pileni, who is professor with a specialty in nanomaterials at the renowned Universite Pierre et Marie Curie in France.

I apologize for the links. They worked when I found them last night, they are gone this morning. Very frustrating. I'll look around and see if I can find at least the Italian one as it was very detailed. This appears to be the same link and it worked from Randi's blog. Let me try again.

Edit: Also, I fail to see how you can trust your intuition on an event that has literally never happened before. If you had seen a bunch of 100 story steel skyscrapers collapse fine. But no-one has. How can you trust intuition for an event your brain has no prior experience with? There isn't even an institutional knowledge of peacefully demolishing skyscrapers of that type and size. No-one in the world has any idea what a 'normal' skyscraper collapse looks like for a 100 story building because before September 11th *it had never happened in the history of the world*.

Somehow I don't see how the fact that *it had never happened in the history of the world* makes it more likely that it happened three times in a single day within minutes.

mellestad wrote:

This is like me saying my intuition says there is something wrong with the moon landings because the flag doesn't look right, therefore the landings were a hoax.

No, that is more like you saying: we have never landed on the moon before, which totally destroys your argument that we didn't do it this time either.

All this technicality discussion to the side, if 9/11 was a conspiracy, it should be a footnote in the charges against the past 3 administrations. Focusing exclusivelly on 9/11 as some sort of "supreeme crime" is clear cut racism and hypocrisy. It's like saying: killing a million brown folks - yea, we can discuss that, but 3000 white people - that is unacceptable!

So what if they blew up WTC? How will that change their portfolio of attrocities against humanity? Not at all. They are demonstratively indiscriminate murderers and 9/11 can only add a few numbers to that fact. What can we learn from them blowing up the WTC? Same thing the 60.000+ dead soldiers in Vietnam and 5.000+ in Iraq found out a long time ago - that they don't give a shit who they kill.

Lastly I will say that I don't care whether a structure is one, ten, hondred or thousand storeys high; it is still a physical object in the physical world, behaving, as physical objects do, in a manner which is dictated by *the laws of physics*. I am taking a note of what Mr. Spence is saying though; that I cannot possibly know anything about building demolition because I can't provide the *numbers*, so this invalidates the experience I have - which I admit gives me only a gut feeling for materials and material behaviour - so, even if I will argue that this gives me a gut feeling which is qualitatively different from the vague intuition of a civilian who knows neither theory nor practice, I will not argue the point any further.

I'm not trying to bust your balls, I'm just trying to point out that without the math, someone who worked on demo of small buildings can't show anything by his intuition about these collapses. If someone sunk 100's of row boats that doesn't make them qualified to argue about the the Titanic based on their gut feeling.

If you can list your arguments one by one then fine, but I don't think it is fair to start your argument from a position of 'knowing', then finding sources that agree with your admitted bias even though you don't understand the math.

I *don't* understand the math, I've said that more than once. My point has simply been, if you don't understand the math either, how can you justify your position and say the official reports are wrong, even though many people who are qualified say the official reports are correct? It just seems like, unless you can formulate your own arguments and list them for refutation we are not discussing things 'rationally' we are just arguing about a conflict of opinion based with our only evidence being our intuitive reactions to other people's highly technical work.

I still haven't found a reasonable explanation for the nano-thermite residue, which was the story that got me very curious about all of this stuff.

Thank you for taking the time. Let me repeat my earlier suggestion about the residue.

A few years ago, the DEA was very excited. Tests were now available that could detect cocaine on dollar bills if someone who had handled cocaine had then handled bills. But it was a bust. Because ANY RANDOM SAMPLE OF BILLS turned up positive for cocaine.

They abandoned the idea of being able to convict based on cocaine traces on the money.

On to WTC. It seems to me to be a reasonable idea that the particles found were contamination from some other source. Or maybe not even "nano thermite".

The cocaine analogy i find problematic. Here's a couple of reasons.

When you are trying to find instruments that will detect the presence or absence of a particular substance in a rapid and cost-effective way, there will be big problems with 'background levels' and contamination. However, when you're dealing with a test that can quantify the percentage of a certain substance in a sample, then it is much less likely that you will get inundated with false positives. We get this problem in agriculture science when testing for pathogens in seed. The paper did specify the percentage in the dust sample of 0.1%.

Also, cocaine is a very commonly used substance compared with the 'nano-therrmite' proposed substance. And money changes hands so fast with an expectation that it could pass through a drug-user's hands quite easily at some point in its travels.

I find the 'background contamination' thing to be weak when there were four samples from four different sites. I would prefer that there was published analysis confirming or denying the presence of these particles in much more than four samples though. And i would prefer that these had a great sampling procedure without potential for contamination. I don't know whether such samples exist, but I would hope they would be tested if they do.

They still test for some kind of trace substances at airports by swabbing insides of bags. They did it the last time I was through. But I'm guessing there are good reasons for not swabbing peoples money.

I have heard the theory that the nano-thermite is paint. This was addressed on some sites I've seen by saying that the paint and primer that was in the building was tested for the 'exothermic reaction' that was seen with the 'nano-thermite' chips and wasn't the same. It didn't chemcially react when ignited, basically.

Maybe these guys made it all up. Maybe they are crackpots. Maybe they are just being made to seem like crackpots. I really don't know. But since I'm in Canada, I'm content to watch and see what happens and whether these guys gain in credibility or not.

Here is the abstract from their paper, for convenient perusal.

"Abstract: We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in all the samples we have studied of the dust produced by the destruction of the World Trade Center. Examination of four of these samples, collected from separate sites, is reported in this paper. These red/gray chips show marked similarities in all four samples. One sample was collected by a Manhattan resident about ten minutes after the collapse of the second WTC Tower, two the next day, and a fourth about a week later. The properties of these chips were analyzed using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The red material contains grains approximately 100 nm across which are largely iron oxide, while aluminum is contained in tiny plate-like structures. Separation of components using methyl ethyl ketone demonstrated that elemental aluminum is present. The iron oxide and aluminum are intimately mixed in the red material. When ignited in a DSC device the chips exhibit large but narrow exotherms occurring at approximately 430 °C, far below the normal ignition temperature for conventional thermite. Numerous iron-rich spheres are clearly observed in the residue following the ignition of these peculiar red/gray chips. The red portion of these chips is found to be an unreacted thermitic material and highly energetic."

"There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right." Martin Luther King

OK fortitude, I am going to agree with you that the whole cocaine on money thing is problematic but I will explain my thoughts on the matter.

First off, the source that cj gave us is Snopes. Now don't get me wrong here, snopes is fairly cool and they tend to come up with stuff that is probably correct. However, there is a problem with using snopes as a source for lots of information.

Consider the nature of what they do. They get some story that is going around and they check it out based on what information happens to be publicly available. Then they synthesize that into a short article which is pretty much what they think is probably a reasonable explanation. As such, anything that you get there is an editorial opinion. That much is fine but where is the peer review on what they come up with?

Honestly, we need to see other tests done by other people with different political leanings. Even then, that is not enough but anything else might help to shed some light on the matter.

After a quick google serach, I found that the same test has been done on euros and they found one possibly relevant bit of data. Here is the BBC news link:

If you read that article, you will find that there is a superficial conclusion that bill contamination is worse in Europe that it is in the US. However, if you look a bit closer, it also says that the tests have been going on over time. The earliest samples show the least contamination. That much is sort of in line with what cj is saying about environmental contamination.

It just struck me that there is a glaring omission in the 'nano-thermite' story. Were there any 'control' samples collected in the same way, at around the same period, from sites otherwise similar but progressively further away from ground zero, or at least a few from somewhere unlikely to have been contaminated by material from the collapse, but otherwise as similar as possible?

Without such control samples, there is a serious question-mark over the significance of the study to 9/11. It should have occurred to any serious investigator.

Maybe they did and it was omitted from the account?

Fortitude, you only mention four samples from four sites, which all showed contamination. That totally fails to address the possibility of background contamination. The case would in fact be stronger if at least one sample showed none, especially if it was from an area possibly further from likely explosive sites.

First off, the source that cj gave us is Snopes. Now don't get me wrong here, snopes is fairly cool and they tend to come up with stuff that is probably correct. However, there is a problem with using snopes as a source for lots of information.

I have also quoted skeptic.com (skeptic magazine) and James Randi's blog. I agree with your problems with snopes and was not intending it as anything other than confirmation that I was not blowing smoke about environmental contamination.

There is a reason why the dudes on CSI use gloves, special plastic baggies that can not be bought at the local store, other specialized equipment for collecting samples AND documentation of a chain of custody. Good scientists use them, too. These samples were supposedly collected shortly after the collapse, but there is no documentation that I can find about how the samples were stored for 5-6 years before testing and no chain of custody. I am sure people would not knowingly defraud the investigator, but we have no way of proving that, do we?

If these and many other questions could be answered about these samples, I would be happy to entertain other opinions. We are back to extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.

"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken

"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.

I had thought something along those lines earlier. I wondered what results would be found if samples were taken from different cities around the US. Is this a uniquely New York thing? When they say "nano-thermite" does that mean "tiny particles of alumina and rust that you are likely to find literally anywhere on the surface of the earth"? Without a comparison between New York and other similar urban locations in the U.S., I don't see how that is meaningful.

And an analogy between that scenario and the one in which cocaine on money is not uncommon is valid. Sure, the DEA might be able to find trace amounts of drugs on something you own. No, that doesn't mean that you are a drug dealer. That's the problem with using hair samples for drug tests. They get a lot of false positives since trace amounts of chemicals characteristic to drugs do find their way into the hair of non-drug users. So pointing out that those chemicals are in your hair doesn't mean a whole lot. I suspect that such a situation is happening with these nano-particles that were found.

"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India

I find the 'background contamination' thing to be weak when there were four samples from four different sites. I would prefer that there was published analysis confirming or denying the presence of these particles in much more than four samples though. And i would prefer that these had a great sampling procedure without potential for contamination. I don't know whether such samples exist, but I would hope they would be tested if they do.

There are tons of debris piled up from the construction. Many samples have been taken looking for pollutants. The pile has not greatly diminished from the sample taking. So why hasn't anyone else found traces of thermite which is supposedly in such great quantities? If it really is that prevalent, hundreds of labs around the world should be hollering about this. <crickets>

I say hundreds of labs not because I know how many samples have been taken, nor do I know where they have all been sent. But I do know that every time a chemist tests a sample, they send it off to more than one lab in more than one country to independently verify. It's SOP.

fortitude wrote:

I have heard the theory that the nano-thermite is paint. This was addressed on some sites I've seen by saying that the paint and primer that was in the building was tested for the 'exothermic reaction' that was seen with the 'nano-thermite' chips and wasn't the same. It didn't chemcially react when ignited, basically.

The authors analyze the behavior of the samples when heated in air in a differential scanning calorimeter (DSC). The result is that all the samples begin to burn in the temperature range between 415 and 435°C. In some cases, the heat generated by the exothermic reaction reaches 7.5 kJ/g. After combustion, spheroidal particles are found in the porous burned residues. Some of these particles are rich in iron and other are rich in silicon (which is transparent and translucent). These particles indicate that high temperatures were reached as a result of an unspecified chemical reaction (which begins at 430°C!). According to the authors, this reaction can only be thermitic. In particular, therefore, the authors claim (page 22 of the paper) that a highly exothermic reaction, such as to generate temperatures of approximately 1400°C, needed to melt iron and iron oxide, was triggered at only 430°C. What this thermitic reaction that is triggered at 430°C might be is not known, since the ignition temperature of commercial thermite is higher than 900°C. The authors seem to have failed to consider that the matrix of the red layer is highly abundant in carbon and that carbon has a lower heating value (or net calorific value) of 34.03 kJ/g, whereas thermite releases 3.9 kJ/g in combustion. In other words, one gram of carbon releases, in combustion at constant pressure, more than eight times the energy released by one gram of thermite. Since the measurement was performed in air (why? Is this another rather embarrassing error in methodology, after the MEK blunder?), one cannot exclude the combustion of carbon, which is instead highly probable. In order to obtain reliable results, since thermite does not require an oxidizer from the external environment, the DSC measurement should have been conducted in an inert gas environment (with nitrogen or argon).

My apologies for quoting this entire paragraph. I will try to summarize, if I get it wrong, anyone, please correct me.

The samples began to burn at 415-435 degrees Celsius. But the buildings were burning at 1400 degrees Celsius. I think it is valid to ask - how did it get from here to there? Commercial thermite doesn't begin to burn until about 900 degrees C. Why doesn't the original paper mention this?

The author also points out that burning one gram (1g) of carbon releases 8 times the amount of energy that the samples released. Just how does that make them some sort of top secret super nano-thermite explosive? If just plain carbon is 8 times more energetic than their samples, how can the authors state that the samples were "highly energetic"? Don't they know about the properties of other elements?

Also, this paper demonstrates (and has pretty pictures) that the corrosion-resistant paint used on the WTC oxidizes (burns) differently at different temperatures. As is also stated in the NIST documents. Why didn't the original paper address this?

If Sr. Manieri is incorrect about any of the chemical properties mentioned, I will be happy to correct my opinions.

fortitude wrote:

Maybe these guys made it all up. Maybe they are crackpots. Maybe they are just being made to seem like crackpots. I really don't know. But since I'm in Canada, I'm content to watch and see what happens and whether these guys gain in credibility or not.

Here is the abstract from their paper, for convenient perusal.

By now, I have seen that bloody abstract more times than I ever wanted. I'll bet from just the ignorance about relative energy levels of various materials, there is a reason why most chemists are not taking them seriously.

-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.

"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken

"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.

I am getting fed up of trying to convince the *believers* in the fairy tale about Ali Baba and the Nineteen Hijackers that the collapse of all three WTC buildings 1, 2 and 7 were VERY questionable incidents, and that multiple in situ eyewitnesses observed explosions - which supports what (in my opinion) any person of common sense should immideately understand: The buildings were blown up. Debating whether or not dust samples are containing nano-thermite materials isn't going anywhere. We're just fidgeting around details. We're missing the larger picture.

Let's instead turn to the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania crash. The obvious question must be: Where are the fucking planes? Both Flight 77 and Flight 93 should have left in excess of 60 tons of wreckage - but there's *nothing* there. Instead we are being told that Flight 77 not only vapourised on impact, but it also carried on to punch holes through six reinforced concrete walls. And Flight 93 simply vanished, leaving only a hole in the ground, a partly burnt up Arab passport and a red bandana. P.T. Barnum couldn't have pulled off a better trick, but he would have known what to say about anyone who *believes* in that bullshit.

Never mind that four allegedly hijacked aircrafts were flown around for an hour without any interceptors being scrambled, as protocol demands when *any* plane, of *any* kind, private or commercial, at *any* time, and for *any* reason, deviates from their flight path and/or shuts down their communication with ground control. Never mind that all such big commercial planes since the late 70's have had ground control remote override systems installed (in case of *hijackings* and/or pilots for any other reason becoming incapacitated). Never mind that Flight 77 were performing arcane air acrobatics over the tightest controlled airspace in the world for several minutes before - allegedly - slamming into the tightest controlled building in the world, then promptly "vapourising", all 60 tons of it; shoes, hats an all. I mean... come on!

Something stinks to high heaven here.

Lastly: Why am I interested in this shit at all???

Because political propaganda surrounding these events have changed the entire world, including (but not limited to) my personal freedom to move around at will without subjecting myself to the humiliation of being treated as a potential criminal, to the point of well-nigh giving blood samples and having my body cavities searched by prying fingers. Police with machine guns are prancing around in broad daylight as if there was nothing strange about this. My home country has been dragged into a suspect war over oil and pipelines in Afghanistan, leving multiple soldiers dead. My children are going to have to grow up in an Orwellian fascist world of police and passport laws. Yeah damn right I'm bloody well pissed off!

And all the while, there are smug motherfuckers and corporate criminals spouting *bullshit* while trying to pretend as if there's nothing wrong with the whole oil-and-money trace, that all I have to do is learn how to hate Arabs and I'll be just fine. Well fuck that shit! As far as Nazi regimes go, once in this world ought to be enough.

"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)

First off, the source that cj gave us is Snopes. Now don't get me wrong here, snopes is fairly cool and they tend to come up with stuff that is probably correct. However, there is a problem with using snopes as a source for lots of information.

I have also quoted skeptic.com (skeptic magazine) and James Randi's blog. I agree with your problems with snopes and was not intending it as anything other than confirmation that I was not blowing smoke about environmental contamination.

OK, first off, I was not trying to imply that you were blowing smoke on this. Rather that given the nature of this subject, there are probably better sources one could use. Although I will honestly disclose that I got the BBC news link from the Straight Dope forums, so yah...

Past that, I am not seeing the links to randi or skeptic that relate to cocaine on money. I see the links to the nanothermite question, just not the ones that I think you are saying that you provided.

cj wrote:

There is a reason why the dudes on CSI use gloves, special plastic baggies that can not be bought at the local store, other specialized equipment for collecting samples AND documentation of a chain of custody.

If these and many other questions could be answered about these samples, I would be happy to entertain other opinions. We are back to extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Oh well, I will entertain differing opinions even when no links are provided. Those things are out there and can be addressed if we hear what they are.

As an example, I offer the deal with the so called “molten steel”. Once that was mentioned, I was able to do some googling and I found that NOAA did aerial studies of ground zero. They clearly detected temperatures in the range of molten aluminum. That should drive a nail in that particular coffin.

Not so. I got shit from marquis because I use an American English word processor and therefore there was no aluminum in the buildings because that is not a chemical element. Past that, I stand informed that molten aluminum is silvery in appearance.

Honestly, the appearance of molten aluminum is one of the canards of the truther movement. Sure, at just above the melting point, aluminum looks silvery. However, that is actually totally irrelevant to the factual temperatures measured by scientific instrumentation.

As all substances do, molten aluminum radiates black body radiation. At just above the temperature where it melts, that radiation is in the infrared range. Your eyes will not register the radiation, yet it is there. At the temperatures measured by NOAA, aluminum radiates what a layman would call “orange hot”. To someone who has no experience with molten metals, it is going to be quite difficult to make a visual identification of the exact substance from a hundred or more feet away.

Not so. I got shit from marquis because I use an American English word processor and therefore there was no aluminum in the buildings because that is not a chemical element. Past that, I stand informed that molten aluminum is silvery in appearance.

Dude, honestly... that was more than a little bit tongue-in-cheek.

The real question is: Why was red hot steel beams being pulled out of the sites 3 months later?

"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)

OK, planes were flying into the tops of the WTC towers, fires started up in the tops of the WTC towers on 911 and ... everything below planes/fires in WTC was still intact as seen on TV/video. NYFD staff was moving up to fight the fires. It was considered safe! And suddenly, POUFF, POUFF, POUFF ... everything that was intact below planes/fires + NYFD became dust! Crushed by the small, plane damaged tops or fire damaged tops falling down from above. http://heiwaco.tripod.com/pouf.htm .

Now, a big building like WTC1 cannot be crushed down from top down to ground by a little fire/plane damaged top part. I am happy to announce that such things do not happen in the real world; http://heiwaco.tripod.com/blgb.htm . In the religious world where miracles occur and devils or terrorists are messing around such things happen, so I recommend that US authorities investigate who blow up, using controlled demolition, WTC 1, 2 and 7.

Let's instead turn to the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania crash. The obvious question must be: Where are the fucking planes? Both Flight 77 and Flight 93 should have left in excess of 60 tons of wreckage - but there's *nothing* there. Instead we are being told that Flight 77 not only vapourised on impact, but it also carried on to punch holes through six reinforced concrete walls. And Flight 93 simply vanished, leaving only a hole in the ground, a partly burnt up Arab passport and a red bandana.

OK, planes were flying into the tops of the WTC towers, fires started up in the tops of the WTC towers on 911 and ... everything below planes/fires in WTC was still intact as seen on TV/video. NYFD staff was moving up to fight the fires. It was considered safe! And suddenly, POUFF, POUFF, POUFF ... everything that was intact below planes/fires + NYFD became dust! Crushed by the small, plane damaged tops or fire damaged tops falling down from above. http://heiwaco.tripod.com/pouf.htm .

Now, a big building like WTC1 cannot be crushed down from top down to ground by a little fire/plane damaged top part. I am happy to announce that such things do not happen in the real world; http://heiwaco.tripod.com/blgb.htm . In the religious world where miracles occur and devils or terrorists are messing around such things happen, so I recommend that US authorities investigate who blow up, using controlled demolition, WTC 1, 2 and 7.

OK, this thread is now bringing in nutters from google searches. Probably the best free advertising that Brian could not purchase even if he wanted to.

The real question is: Why was red hot steel beams being pulled out of the sites 3 months later?

Hmm, we have scientifically verified red hot aluminum. We have a suggestion of red hot steel. And you don't see any connection here?

As far as the whole how much later deal, I have no experience with how insulation might be engineered. However, the fact that we know that red hot metal existed long after it would have been cooled in open air should indicate that such insulation is possible in the real world.

OK, I tried both your (rather patronising) links, and I must have already looked at thousands of websites that, as yours did, show images of *no planes*, combined with innumerable first-hand reports that do not correlate with the official story, not to mention statements from pilots - some of whom have even personally flown the very individual planes in questioning - that this story just isn't *right*.

It is now clear to me that you must think that I'm just regurgitating superficial *bullshit* which is made up by this or that wild-eyed conspiracy nutter, but I can assure you that this is not the case. I have done my homeork. Short of visiting the sites in person, I have probably looked at every available piece of bunk-and-or-debunk-then-doubly-bunk-the-debunk motherfucking website there is - including some that had me chuckling for *days* because they were just so far out in the looney fields of willfully seeking political excuses for their agenda. (I am politically *very* conservative, probably just a little to the right of Djengis Khan.)

But your remark about public advertising value was funny.

(Even though you should probably look at that dudes website if *numbers* is your thing.)

"The idea of God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind." (Alphonse Donatien De Sade)

Well, you asked for an explanation as to why there were no little bits of aircraft spread all over the place. So you get pictures of little bits of aircraft at the crash sites.

You find the lmgtfy site to be patronizing? Well, I will observe that since seeing that you are continuing to claim that you have looked at too many photographs to be worth counting and yet you still seem to hold the idea that there were no aircraft. Nine years after the fact and you could have found those pics on your own just by googling the matter. Umm, yah.

Still, if it had been the case that there were no aircraft involved, the matter would still require an explanation.

There is a fact that there was a great gaping hole in the side of the pentagon. If it was not a jet then what did hit the pentagon? Some say it must have been a missile. If the be the case, then where are the little bits of missile scattered around? Perhaps this was a special secret military missile that evaporates on contact? Umm, just why would a company such as Lockheed Martin spend millions of dollars to develop that? I guess that the government must have paid for this amazing lack of tactical value.

What accounts for the lack of bits of flight 93 (if it had indeed ever been lacking)? Well, I have only heard one really good explanation for that and it is a hoot! Apparently, in the seconds after Todd Beamer screamed “Let's Roll!”, five guys armed only with box cutters managed to off dozens of pissed off air travelers who were committed to taking the flight back. Then after that, the terrorists dropped down to a tree clipping altitude to evade radar and somehow managed to get the plane from the middle of Pennsylvania out of the country with nobody on the ground noticing such an aircraft. Then it was flown to some place that has runways that can handle a 767 and facilities to cut it down to scrap and sell it off on the open market with nobody the wiser.

Umm, yah... That sounds about right for a bunch of guys who want to make a huge public splash.

I think that it is rather more probable that two or three of the hijackers were in fact subdued and the one actually flying the plane said “screw this” and went nose to the ground.

OK, as improbable as that idea is, there is one somewhat serious point that I really must disclose here. I got that amazing bit of bullshit from a professional 767 pilot. When you fly pretty much anywhere, you may be trusting your life to this guy (long odds given the total number of commercial pilots but since we are discussing the wildly improbable, I don't see how we can discount that). He is a really responsible guy. And when it comes to what happened on 9/11, he makes some of the most “out there” truthers come off as fairly sane.

If, further down this thread, you want to link to some BS outfit like professionalpilotsfortruth.org or some such, you can do so with the certain knowledge that I will link you back to this post.

The only hint of 'molten steel' being found much later may have been deep at the bottom of some lift shafts.

The idea of it being present in more open parts of the site 'months later' makes no sense on any scenario. Thermite would have all burnt out on the day, so what would be the significance, 'demolition' or not?

As that site shows, burning plastics can easily hit temperatures sufficient to explain any of the credible observations.

I can't see that site being referenced previously in this thread - it looks worth reading.